Prabhudev Konana, dean of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business: “We will lean into our ongoing commitment to teach students to create value for society—to address grand challenges in ways that are practical, scalable and financially viable”
In 2025, I want the Smith School to double down on the most important initiatives from our strategic plan.
In 2024, we proudly unveiled the Fact-Based Discourse Initiative to bring diversity of thoughts to our students with a series of debates and panel discussions with leading policy makers and industry. The topics included national debt and deficit, ESG investing, and student-debt forgiveness, and the ever-evolving challenges of social media and misinformation. Our goal is to empower students to think critically and independently—because learning how to think is far more powerful than being told what to think!
Our capitalistic society within a democratic system, and strong rights ensuring freedom of expression, brings different ideas and beliefs. It is crucial for students to learn how to evaluate evidence critically, engage respectfully with differing perspectives, discern credible information, and draw their own well-informed conclusions. The above initiative has made a powerful impact, and received enthusiastic feedback from students, faculty, and even parents. I am committed to the growth and expansion of this skill set among our students.
We also must continue to expand access to business education, in line with our guiding principle “Business is everyone’s business.” Parents and students believe that business education is a pathway for upward mobility and better career choices irrespective of one’s major. By creating an online business minor, we have opened business education to many more students by making it easier to fit in business courses alongside their own majors. We have also broadened our outreach to regional high school students.
We have boldly and intentionally embraced AI and Generative AI, recognizing their transformative potential as general-purpose technologies to boost productivity and efficiency. Our vision extends beyond embracing—we aim to foster creativity through contextual AI while remaining keenly aware of the challenges, such as the risks of diminished empathy and integrity. Our commitment is clear: to shape AI-enabled business decisions that prioritize creativity and human impact.
We continue to incentivize to bring experiential learning for these tools and techniques into courses throughout all programs including an AI specialization in the Full-Time MBA. Our faculty and students are building chatbots to help with student learning. But we’re exploring wide-ranging curriculum changes that will give our students even more context, familiarity and practice with these new technologies.
We are incredibly proud to bring our AI expertise to the community as part of our strategic plan. While AI generates excitement, many small businesses struggle to adopt it effectively. Our successful “AI for Small Business” program, in partnership with local county economic development corporations, saw faculty and students work with 50 small businesses to bring creativity, productivity and efficiency. With demand exceeding expectations—attracting five times more interest—we’re excited to expand the program. This initiative reflects our commitment to Maryland as a proud land-grant university.
And finally, we will lean into our ongoing commitment to teach students to create value for society—to address grand challenges in ways that are practical, scalable and financially viable. Our most pressing societal problems can’t be addressed outside an applicable context, and that means business.
—Prabhudev Konana, Dean of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business
